She clasped her hands on her knee, looking at him dreamily.
“Ah, mais non, that’s because you don’t know! I’m an orphan; I had no one—until William came.” Her face softened, glowed, grew infinitely tender. “Guillaume de mon cœur! Before that—I will tell you. Maman died when I was two years old. She was Irish—she was born in southern California, but all her people were Irish. She was poor; she worked in a little inn near a great fruit-grower’s ranch. Mon père”—Fanchon made a sudden grimace—“I didn’t like him. You think that’s wicked? I didn’t love him. He was French and he made wine upon the ranch. He married the Irish girl, and I was born.”
She stopped, her chin in her hand, thinking. Daniel, listening, smiled inwardly. Involuntarily his eyes lifted to the portrait of the ancestral Carter.
“Shade of my ancestors!” he thought amusedly. “An Irish waitress and a French wine-maker!”
But Fanchon’s voice, light and sweet and tantalizing, went on.
“Papa took me to Paris after maman died. He put me in a convent and left me there. That’s all. I never saw him again, though he sent money now and then. At last he died. Voilà!” She clenched her hands passionately. “No one loved me, no one cared whether I lived or died except the good sisters.” She leaned over and laid one hand lightly on the table, looking at him. “Do you wonder now—that I’m so wild?”
“I didn’t know you were wild,” Daniel replied, smiling. “I’m sorry—poor child!”
“No one else was sorry!”
“Oh, yes, I think some one else must have been—besides William,” said Daniel.
She drew her breath quickly, biting her lip. For a long moment she studied him; then, with a shrug, she reached for a match on the table and looked at it, turning it over in her hand.